Offers a general introduction to George Eliot's work as an essayist,
translator and poet. Divided into four sections, the book includes book
reviews, major long essays written for a magazine, shorter pieces containing
many of her ideas and some later essays from her last published book.The works collected in this volume provide an illuminating introduction to
George Eliot's incisive views on religion, art and science, and the nature and
purpose of fiction. Essays such as Evangelical Teaching' show her rejecting her
earlier religious beliefs, while Woman in France' questions conventional ideas
about female virtues and marriage, and Notes on Form in Art' sets out theories
of idealism and realism that she developed further in Middlemarch and Daniel
Deronda. It also includes selections from Eliot's translations of works by
Strauss and Feuerbach that challenged many ideas about Christianity; excerpts
from her poems; and reviews of writers such as Wollstonecraft, Goethe and
Browning. Wonderfully rich in imagery and observations, these pieces reveal the
intellectual development of this most challenging and rewarding of writers.
